Third Christmas
by Mottlemoth
Summary: Snarry; one-shot. Severus has some last minute Christmas presents to finish off. Rated T for slash.


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**Third Christmas**_**  
By Mottlemoth**_

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**Author's Notes**

_Christmas 2009: You might have seen this story of mine before, once titled 'Christmas Bubblebath'. Now edited, spiced up a little, and with a new title!_

_A little festive gift for Snarry fans – because there's no way I'm knitting all of you jumpers, darlings as you are. It's written in Severus's voice, and though I'm usually not a "first person" sort of writer, I think it's gone okay. Do let me know what you think!_

_I'm also now taking festive-based Snarry requests, if anyone has something special in mind! Don't be a stranger!_

_Enjoy, and Happy Holidays to everyone. x_

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I rather like Christmas.

Never would I express such an opinion publicly, of course. To be frank, I doubt it would be believed, and it's far easier to let people consider me a scrooge, a bah-humbug, a bitter old bastard, than start trying to change their minds. What good would it do? I may like Christmas, but have no need to share it with the world. Let sleeping dragons lie.

Since my appointment as Potions Master, I have exchanged presents with Minerva and Albus, Sinistra in Astronomy... no others. For Albus, I always procure some festive alcohol or other, which I gather goes down well. Minerva and I are well-tuned to each other's taste in literature, so a book is usually in order.

Sinistra poses a problem. Although she was in my house when we were students, a single year apart, I never particularly knew her. After a few years of unsuccessful chocolates, I discovered her love of wizarding toiletries – and so brewing of bubble bath, on Christmas Eve, has become something of a tradition for me.

The decorations only go up in my quarters and the workroom when there are no students to pass comment. I don't decorate excessively, of course. Festivity is pleasant, but I've no wish to spend a fortnight living in some kind of grotto. A tree in the lounge, with some tasteful decorations, suits me well. A small amount of tinsel-based cheer in the workroom. Candles – cinnamon-scented. For the past three years, fairy lights have appeared here and there, a novelty bauble or two (usually Quidditch-themed), over-sized Christmas socks tacked above the mantelpiece. I don't mind them. They stay.

It is to the glow of fairy lights that I find myself working, Christmas Eve, browsing through the December issue of my Potions Journal, waiting for Sinistra's lotion to thicken. Christmas songs are playing in the lounge – not an incentive of my own, though a welcome one. _Once in Royal David's City_ softens the air, warms me, and the harmony of voices makes me feel strangely content.

With a glance into the small cauldron on the desk beside me, I reach for a ladle. I stir carefully. I swirl to check for consistency – it seems suitable enough, though I have never made her lotion before. It's usually a bath foam or scented oil of some kind. A frown creases my brow.

As gentle footsteps sound on the stone floor behind me, I glance over one shoulder.

"Do you use moisturiser?" I inquire, turning back to the cauldron and tilting the ladle. It seems too runny; perhaps I should reinvent it as a shower cream, I muse, and arms drape around my neck from behind.

"No," he says. "Not unless my skin's really dry... why? Is this for Sarabi?"

"Mm." I hold up the ladle for his inspection. "It seems far too fluid... I daren't add any more maidenhair sap though."

"It's not that fluid," he says, resting his chin on my shoulder. "What are you putting it in? Just a glass bottle with a cork?"

"Mm." I nod to the side. "That one."

He picks up my bottle of choice – a purple one, vaguely pear-shaped, glazed with crushed pearl, the stopper set with an amethyst. He practices in tipping it. "Runny might be best, you know. If it's much thicker, it won't pour. She'll be whacking the end for hours."

"Yes, I suppose you're right... bring me a funnel, will you?"

His arms ease away from me and he returns with just the right size. As he hands me it, I glance into his bright green eyes. I can't deny him a small smile.

"Where was this delightful efficiency when you were my student?" I tease, and fit the funnel into the bottle, reaching for the ladle.

"I was saving it for now," my Harry quips. He watches with interest as I measure out the lotion, slowly filling the bottle. "In about ten years, my supply's probably going to run out. I'll be a clumsy bag of hormones again."

I huff with both amusement and dread. "I should hope not."

I tap the ladle carefully to fill the last half inch of the bottle, all my hard work come to fruition. I only hope she appreciates it. I wipe the lip of the glass with a cloth, and my Harry moves to settle into my side. I put an arm around him, loosely – he stoppers the bottle for me, twisting the cork into place.

"She'll love it," he says. He holds it up to the glow of the fairy lights, admiring the rose petals suspended within the cream. "How is it magical?"

I stroke the small of his back as I answer, even if I'm keeping a close eye on the bottle in his clumsy paws. Adorable as he is, accidents do happen and I'm loathe to waste a month's work.

"It gives the skin a natural perfume of its own," I tell him, idly. "Sarabi mentioned that she very much liked the scent I gave her last year, but she's used it all... I thought this would be a pleasant alternative."

"Wow..." My Harry looks up at me. "Fingers crossed it works, then. You don't want her to smell like a cream bun or something."

"Fear not. I've tested it."

He pauses, apparently intrigued – then he stretches up to sniff me. "You don't smell any different."

"I've tested it on _you_."

"On me?" he says, startled. "When?"

I persuade the bottle from him, smiling. "I tested it on myself when I was perfecting the actual solution. When I knew it was safe, I added the scent and tried it on your leg, to see how it actually develops on the skin... you were sleeping," I add, seeing his look of bewilderment.

"So you've been rubbing things on my leg when I'm asleep, and sniffing me."

"I only needed it do it once," I say, more haughtily than I intended. "The recipe was correct first time."

He's smiling at me, his eyes bright. "Okay, alright... why on me? Wouldn't it work on you?"

"If I tested it on my hands, students would smell it and assume I used perfume... which I'd rather not have them believe. And if I tested it on a part of my body that students cannot smell, I'd never be able to bend to smell it myself. _Ipso facto_."

"And the logic was that no students would be sniffing my legs," he says, grinning, leaning into me. His hands rest on my chest.

"Quite."

"Why my leg, though? Couldn't you have done my arm or something?"

For a moment, my mind drifts back several nights – adding the last few drops of lavender oil, a murmured final charm, knowing the testing stage has arrived. Carrying a ceramic bowl through to the bedroom. I thought he would be awake. Usually he waits for me to come to bed. He was asleep – laid on his back in bed, uncovered, naked but for one of my old shirts. Why he's started wearing them, I do not know. The workings of his mind boggle me still, three years gone.

His thighs are resting gently apart, and he has a book splayed on his chest, his mouth slightly open as he breathes in deep sleep. I approached him, thinking feet, before I realised his ticklish nature would wake him at once. I dipped two fingers in the lotion and soaked it very gently into his inner thigh, the patch of bare skin which drew my eye the most. He's almost milky smooth. I watched him stir in subconscious enjoyment, wondering how his dreams were accommodating my touch.

"Your legs were easiest to access," I decide.

His eyes sparkle, though he doesn't comment. He slides ever closer to me and his arms twine around my neck, his fingers gentle on the back of my neck. "Have I gotten any special lotions for Christmas?"

The tone in his voice makes me smile, intrigues me, coaxes me to respond to his flirting. I put Sarabi's bottle to one side.

"Perhaps," I muse. "You shall have to wait until the morning, and unwrap your parcels, shan't you?"

"I could just sniff different parts of my body and see if anything is new... it might give me clues, at all."

I chuckle – I can't help it. It is Christmas, after all. He receives a swift pat to the arse, a kiss to the crown of his head and a murmur of, "Go shower, love, and get yourself off to sleep. I shan't be long."

He hesitates, eyes shaded. "Can't we stay up tonight?"

"Why?"

"Well... it's Christmas Eve."

"And?"

"I want to see Christmas in with you." His cheeks flush slightly. "And other mushy stuff like that."

I draw up the sleeve of my robe and check my watch, pensively.

"It's nearly ten," I state. "So... add one hour for you to shower and finish dicking about in the bathroom. Ten minutes for me to shower, brush my teeth, put on my night-clothes and be in bed. Twenty minutes reading, before you annoy me too much to continue. Twenty minutes foreplay. We'll call it twenty-five, seeing as it's Christmas. Ten minutes sex. Ten minutes post-coital cuddling, five minutes getting you to shut up and go to sleep. I believe that brings us comfortably past midnight, with a ten minutes margin of error."

He pulls a face. "It's not sexy when you draw up a schedule."

I smirk, nudging him in the back. "Shower," I insist. "Let me tidy up. Don't be long."

He grins and leans up to kiss my cheek before he leaves. As he makes his exit, I hear him add, "I do not dick about in the bathroom."

"I assure you, you do."

"If you want me to have smooth legs then I have to shave, Sev. Or risk slicing them off with some dodgy charm, and the height difference is bad enough as it is."

I shake my head and smile, watching him go.

Everything tidies itself away quite quickly tonight. For some time I relax on the sofa, uncorking the bottle of mulled wine that I picked up in Hogsmeade last weekend, drinking and enjoying the peace in our rooms.

It is my third Christmas in a stable relationship. His sizeable pile of presents are ready for the morning, stashed securely in the top of the wardrobe. When he's asleep, nested beneath the extra blankets on our bed for the winter, I'll retrieve them from their hiding place and set them at the end of the bed for him, fill his stocking by the fire with all the trinkets I've been collecting since March. My Harry discusses his childhood so rarely; yet I gather, from the little he's said, that all his youngest Christmases were bleak. It's a pain I know well. I spoil him all the more for it – three years now, three years of watching him open presents with a shake in his fingers and the grin breaking off his face, three years of only doubling my efforts and feeling my heart pound each time I realise I have someone of my very own to spoil.

Last year, I gave him a framed photograph of the two of us – a simple shot, black-and-white, one of Miss Granger's from the annual festive gathering of Weasleys. The photograph shows us standing together by the buffet. I have wine, and he has a paper plate piled high with fondant fancies, and he's wearing some ridiculous paper hat that has slipped down over one of his ears. As the photograph moves, he grins and moves near to me, looking up at me. The smallest of smiles graces my lips as I put my arm around his waist. It's one of very few photographs showing us as a couple; Miss Granger tells me it's particularly touching.

He cried when he opened the parcel.

It was the first time in my life I've watched someone cry because of joy – it fascinated me. He burrowed against my chest and thanked me some six or seven times, the tears pouring down his cheeks. He clutched the frame as if it were our firstborn. I dried his tears with the cuff of my dressing gown, amazed by this young man in my arms – amazed by my luck.

I don't know what I did to deserve my Harry. I just pray I keep doing it, whatever it is, all my life.

Mulled wine and my thoughts melt, carrying me through half a cycle of carols until at last, I hear the water turned off in the bathroom. I catch the patter of his feet on the linoleum. It's a few minutes more before the bathroom door opens behind me, light spilling into the lounge. I refill my glass with the last of the mulled wine, heart aglow.

"You're dripping on the carpet," I say. I don't need to look - I know he is. He always is. "You should dry your hair on a towel before you come paddling out here..."

"We're out of towels," he says.

I frown, sipping at my mulled wine. "I put fresh out this morning," I say, "how – " and look up.

He's standing in the doorway to our bathroom, just on the edge of the tiles, graceful on the balls of his bare feet.

He's utterly naked. He's still wet. Steam and candlelight silhouettes him, glancing off his wet boyish curves, and I realise my mouth is a little open.

I close it. He gazes at me, puppy-eyed and quiet. A drip rolls down his belly, over his left thigh, idling its way down his calf, and it's obscene. I'm almost jealous of the water. I wish I could be that single drip, rolling endless and lost over his bare skin, clinging to him, my entire being reliant on him as the world I exist in.

My Harry fiddles with his fingertips, so unaware that he's perfect.

"Rub me dry?" he asks, shyly.

I put down my glass. He watches me as I approach – soft eyes, green eyes, take-care-of-me eyes. Bending slightly, I scoop every wet inch of him into my arms, and carry my early Christmas present off to bed.


End file.
